


All Roads

by w_anderingheart



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop, Red Velvet (K-pop Band), SHINee, f(x)
Genre: Drama, F/M, Road Trips, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-30 00:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8511397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/w_anderingheart/pseuds/w_anderingheart
Summary: Seulgi spends her summer driving down deserted highways with five other kids that don't have it figured out any more than she does.





	

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: mature themes i.e. lots of swearing, mentions of sex/alcohol (details withheld for creative purposes)
> 
> pairings: sehun/seulgi & kai/krystal but this is more seulgi fic than anything else
> 
> setting is north america
> 
> more notes:  
> \- the portrayal of characters in this story are in no way intended to reflect the celebrities in real life. this is 100% fiction and should be read as such
> 
> \- i know taemin was born in 93 but i usually lump him in with the rest of the 94 kids
> 
> \- legit been writing this for a year. this is an 8-month late bday present for @p_swizzle (lj), who wanted "wanderlust seulhun." pls forgive my horrible lateness :( i miss u. hope you read this one day. x
> 
> \- needless to say, this was written before kaistal went canon. i love them dearly. this is not how i view their relationship at all
> 
> (this is available to read on my lj as well: w_anderingheart.livejournal.com)

_wanderlust (n.) – a strong desire to travel_

The night grinds on. Seulgi’s head is feeling light and her bones, heavy. Everything swelters together – the sweat and sticky leather seats and muggy nighttime air and cigarettes and something a little less legal than cigarettes and high-pitched laughter and low-pitched laughter and the two mixed together.

The fluorescent lights snaking above the gas station store flicker. Jinri steps out with the beer. Her makeup looks fresh, as if she’d touched it up in the grimy bathroom, and she smells like flowers—fake flowers, of course, the perfume kind, because where would there be fresh flowers in the middle of nowhere at three in the morning. She climbs up onto the back of Seulgi’s pick-up truck, and sits down beside her.

“For your troubles,” Jinri says, snorting slightly at her own jibe as she says it and hands Seulgi a bottle. Seulgi takes it, if only to shut her up, ignoring the layer of sarcasm in Jinri’s tone. Seulgi has always disliked Jinri’s assumptive ways but even if she told her that, Jinri most likely wouldn’t take it seriously.

On the other side of the gas pumps, they hear Krystal’s laugh, tinkling and melodious; travelling, probably, for miles and miles in the silent night.

It’s followed by more laughter, the boys’ laughter, and Seulgi sees Jinri shifting restlessly from foot to foot, anxious to join them.

There’s a short pause, before Jinri whines, sudden and tantrum-like, “Man, this is depressing! I feel like I’m your babysitter and you’re the playground kid who can’t socialize.” She throws her hair back. “I hate playing the middle person.”

Seulgi runs her tongue behind her teeth. “Then don’t,” she says, no sympathy included. She’s known Jinri a long time—diapers, lived on the same block, first day of kindergarten wearing matching shorts, etcetera etcetera (branched off and went to different high schools, though)—and, although Seulgi is sorry to say it, Jinri’s head never filled up with anything but air over the years and Seulgi has long since stopped trying to play sympathetic to her woes. 

“Look, I dragged you on our trip to, like, meet my friends. Get to know them and whatever.” She stops to survey Seulgi’s unmoving expression. “But it’s kind of hard for them to do that when you never want to hang out with them,” continues Jinri. She takes the end of her t-shirt and wraps it around the top of the bottle, twisting with a grimace before the cap pops off.

“Is that what they said?” Seulgi opens her own beer.

Jinri smacks her lips together, carefully, so as not to mess up her lip gloss. “Dude, no. I’m just—Jeez. Never mind.“ She catches herself and stands up abruptly. Seulgi sighs through her nose. Jinri makes a frustrated sound, and takes the six pack with her as she crosses the lot, toward Krystal’s bubbling laughter.

Seulgi watches Jinri pass out the beer to the others. Krystal slings an arm around her to keep her in place by her side until Jongin comes along and pulls Krystal by her shoulders. Krystal yelps and swats him playfully, but she’s grinning—that bright, princess grin that is as lovely as it is sly. Seulgi doesn’t really like Krystal, but my God, that smile. It makes strangers spiral into helpless, sudden love—puppy love, except totally one-sided and minus the innocence. Seulgi’s seen her wield that smile like a weapon, these past few days since she’s met her. That smile’s gotten their group discounts at grubby diners.

As Jongin hugs Krystal to his side, Taemin makes a quiet move to hold Jinri’s wrist, as if in consolation, and Jinri flushes pink. Seulgi frowns at Taemin’s gesture, but more so at Jinri’s resulting blush; it feels, to Seulgi, sadder than it is sweet, and it’s stupid, Seulgi thinks, that Jinri swoons at the dumbest things.

The other boy in the group, whose name Seulgi has not yet memorized, smiles detachedly as he fills his car up. He laughs at Krystal’s jokes just a beat too late, as if he has to remind himself to do it, keeping his gaze, for the most part, on the gas pump instead of the group. Seulgi wonders if he’s just tired, like her, but doesn’t want to show it.

She dumps her beer bottle, then, without drinking it and slides into her truck to sleep.

 

 

Seulgi was dragged onto this trip. She did not know Jinri’s school friends, and she did not really like them—she didn’t even really like Jinri, past ninth grade.

It’s her mom’s fault, actually. Seulgi had skipped out on prom (for obvious reasons), Jinri had found out, and at five in the morning the next day, Jinri had showed up to her house, told her to pack a bag (“Maybe two, actually.”) and gas up her truck, “because _we_ are going on a motha-fuckin’ after-prom road trip!”

“Who the fuck is we?” Seulgi says flatly, trying to keep her voice low; which, at this point, was dumb because her mom had already woken up and was peering into the foyer, at the foot of the stairs.

“My friends and I,” Jinri informed her. “And you’re coming!” She looks past Seulgi’s shoulder and waves at her mom. “Right, Ms. Kang? _Annyeonghasaeyo,_ by the way. I just wanted to ask if I can hang out with Seulgi for the next few weeks?”

Jinri says that latter half in botched Korean, but Seulgi’s mom—for reasons beyond Seulgi’s comprehension—finds it kind of cute and endearing, but mostly she sees a chance to get her shut-in daughter out of the house to go Make Memories or whatever it is American teenagers do in 90s movies. Seulgi caved, maybe so that her mom wouldn’t have to worry about her all summer or maybe because deep down, she wanted to be far away from the world for two months and the wide desert road didn’t sound terrible.

So at 5:28 that morning, she had two bags of clothes, her truck, and a scowl as they merged onto the highway, orange sunrise stretching towards them through the open windows.

 

 

Two and a half weeks into their road trip, Krystal starts getting sick.

“She’s making my truck smell like ass.” Seulgi kicks the ground with the toe of her sneaker. Dust flies into the air. The man behind the gas station counter is taking a nap, and Seulgi has been running through her head for the last ten minutes a half-hearted plan of action to steal a box of chocolate bars. 

“Don’t talk so loud,” Jinri scolds. She huffs as she places the newly-washed mats back onto the floor of the truck. Seulgi had told her to wash it twice and thrice, to make sure her truck was completely rid of Krystal’s vomit. Jinri keeps making these annoying little noises, like she’s the one being inconvenienced.

The gas station guy is knocked out cold, when Seulgi glances at him again ten minutes later, and she decides fuck it, she’s totally going to steal some chocolate bars before she leaves. “If Krystal keeps throwing up her breakfasts, she’s not riding with me anymore.”

“Come on, don’t be mean.”

“My truck, my gas, my money.” Seulgi pauses. Then adds, “My seats and floors she’s puking all over.”

“She told me she’s been wanting a break from riding in the boys’ car. So play nice.”

“It’s not my fault she got in a fight with Jongin and now they hate each other.”

“Look, she’s sick. Can you just not make it worse for her?”

“Cover today’s gas bill and I’ll call it even.”

Jinri heads into the store without much protest. She passes Krystal on her way inside, as Krystal steps out, clutching her stomach. Her skin is pale and weak. The white lights make her look ghostly. And yet, there’s still a glow to her—dim and alarmingly frail—but a glow all the same. There’s a rumpled flower crown sitting atop her head, one she’d bought from a dollar store in one of the towns they passed through. The flowers are plastic and cheap-looking, but she makes it work, as dishevelled and ill as she is.

“I know what happened.”

Seulgi raises an eyebrow and glances over. His name is Sehun. She’s finally learnt his name. He doesn’t talk much, she finds. Ironically, it makes him stick out, amidst all his loud friends which is how she remembers him—the quiet one. 

Today he’s dressed in a yellow muscle shirt and a bright red snapback, which, if you ask Seulgi, is not a great colour scheme. But Seulgi also wears the same pair of converse since freshman year of high school so she’s not really judging.

“I know what happened,” Sehun says again, nodding slightly in Krystal’s direction. His voice is soft, like he’s worried Krystal will hear.

“Yeah. Me too,” Seulgi replies, voice not soft because she doesn’t care who hears. She leans against her truck with her arms folded across her chest. “She shouldn’t have eaten that hamburger from that shitty diner with the expired cheese.” It was a super shitty diner. Seulgi had tried to sway the group towards the McDonalds’ down the street but Jinri had argued that they all ought to be “more adventurous.”

“It’s not the cheese,” says Sehun.

“Think it was the milk, then? It did smell bad to me too.”

Sehun shakes his head, lips thin. “Wasn’t the milk either.”

Seulgi glances at him sharply, a question poised, but Jongin hollers loudly for Sehun to start up his car and Sehun slinks away from Seulgi with a heavy look—deep and rich and overflowing with so many things Seulgi wants answers for.

But then, she remembers she wants chocolate bars more. So she grabs her frayed satchel from the back of her truck and heads into the store to shove as much as she can into her bag while Jinri still has the clerk occupied with the gas bill.

 

 

Two more days of driving and the group hits a town so small the map they’re reading off of doesn’t even register its existence. They check into a bed and breakfast, owned by an old man who also runs the pub downstairs. He eyes all of them warily as he hands them keys to the rooms, but he is nice enough so Seulgi gives him a little smile and thanks him.

A three minute walk from the inn, Taemin spots an enclosed lake. He knocks on the girls’ room to report his findings.

“Skinny dipping,” he announces with that tiny smirk of his. Seulgi, already sprawled on her bed (there were two—one for herself and one for Jinri and Krystal to share), looks up from her phone screen with dry opposition. She notices Sehun standing a little ways behind Taemin, hands stuck in the pockets of an ugly hoodie. He’s still standing at the threshold of the door, as if reluctant to enter the room without explicitly being invited in.

Taemin has no such qualms. He seats himself down on the edge of Jinri and Krystal’s bed. Krystal is in the bathroom throwing up and Jinri is rifling through Krystal’s suitcase to find her friend a fresh shirt.

“We are _not_ going skinny dipping, Taemin,” Jinri says. “Krystal is way too sick to do anything right now.”

“But you haven’t seen this lake yet,” he argues. He shakes out his fake, sandy-blonde hair with his fingers. Seulgi, although she’d never say this to any living being, finds a very dangerous prettiness to Taemin’s smiles—a delicateness to his pointed stares, a challenge in the curve of his lips. “Come on, Krys doesn’t have to actually swim. But we can _not_ miss out on this. Follow the road, from the way we came and you’ll see it.”

He stands up from the bed with a bounce to his feet. He looks at Seulgi. “You too, ice queen,” he says, then turns to Sehun, who still hadn’t stepped inside. “Let’s go, Sehun.”

So they walk out to the lake, Krystal balanced a little bit on Jinri as they do. Seulgi trails behind them. The boys are already there, clothes abandoned by the edge of the water, under garments and all. 

Taemin hollers when he sees them. Jongin splashes water in his face and it catches in Taemin’s throat, making him choke.

Sehun is floating lazily on his back, eyes closed, turned upwards towards the night sky.

They shed their clothes. Seulgi keeps her undergarments on because she sure as fuck doesn’t trust that water. Jinri, with a petulant insistence that the boys close their eyes, takes off everything and jumps in behind Seulgi. Krystal rolls up her jeans and dips her feet in.

Taemin is crude for the rest of the night and Seulgi wonders if he’s a bit drunk. He keeps dipping his head underwater, claiming he’ll swim with his eyes open and peek a look at Jinri. She shrieks every time he pulls her foot with his hand, and Seulgi swims off to the side and lets the water sink into her sore muscles.

It’s a little too cold for summer. She shivers before her body adjusts to the temperature. Sehun comes up beside her, bumping her by accident. (At least, she expects it’s an accident.) He looks apologetic after, and puts a bit of distance between them, but for a second, Seulgi feels his bare thigh against her own—his hip bumping the thin material of her underwear—and she figures he must be very, very naked.

“How is Krystal?” he asks.

Seulgi shrugs, although the movement is lost amidst the water. “Throwing up and kind of weak but she seems better.”

Sehun licks his lips. “Did she tell you what happened?”

Seulgi turns her head, unsure how to read his tone. “Tell us what?”

Sehun meets Seulgi’s eyes and raises a moist brow. He looks away, at his submerged hands. “Jongin told me what happened. Not sure he told Taemin, though.”

Seulgi isn’t really following the conversation anymore, but she’s not sure she cares either. “Whatever it is, maybe she told Jinri.” Except, Seulgi isn’t completely sure Krystal’s said much of anything in 24 hours. Krystal’s been riding in Seulgi’s truck, and any few words she might have said since this morning, Seulgi’s sure she would have heard.

“I heard you’re childhood friends with Jinri,” Sehun says abruptly. “She mentioned it to me a few days ago.”

“Oh yeah? What else did she say?”

Sehun blinks at Seulgi’s tone, much sharper than the tone that had been in her head, but the words are already out and she finds it futile to recant them. “Not much else,” he says, and something about his quiet firmness makes Seulgi think he’s telling the truth.

She stares, fixated—for a tiny, tilted moment—at the way the white light from the moon hits the shimmer of water across his collarbones. A sudden rush of air seems to fill her lungs—thick air, suffocating and refreshing all at once. And, at the same time, they both realize she’s been staring too long. She blinks. He smiles, a mix of amused and sheepish, as if he’s caught her in the act of something and is embarrassed on her behalf.

Seulgi frowns and looks away and figures the body heat between his naked skin and hers must be all in her head.

 

 

After Seulgi broke a freshman boy’s rib when she was in sophomore year, her mother got her a therapist and the therapist (after two weeks) decided, very insistently and with faux-gentleness, that Seulgi most definitely suffered from anger management issues.

‘Suffered’, being the exact words she used and the word rubbed Seulgi the wrong way, just as much as it had scared her, as if there was something physically, fundamentally wrong with her—as if an error lied right in her bloodstream.

But Seulgi realized that was bullshit. No one know her more than herself, and she refused to be told otherwise because at the end of the day, the self was the only person you could trust.

It all kicked into focus for her: that the world—in all its shiny, transitory glamour—really masked a sad shabbiness. Grey, hidden behind fake rainbows. People relying on other people to tell them who they were. Lives filled with shallow pleasure and pleasure that died as surely as the human body.

 

 

Krystal stops drinking beer. Seulgi is the first to notice, not because it is really her issue, but because Jinri is too worried about Krystal’s fever and nausea to notice the other dumb little details. So Seulgi notices it before she does. They are stopped at a gas station between the Skinny Dipping Town and the next town over, and Seulgi is in charge of stalking up on the alcohol.

Krystal is hunched over in the truck—eyes closed but not sleeping. They are alone, because Jinri had walked over to Sehun’s car to discuss the map with him. Seulgi clears her throat awkwardly.

“I’m getting more booze. Did you, uh, want anything in particular? Your gross lime coolers or something?” she asks.

Krystal shakes her head weakly. “No, thanks.”

Seulgi goes in and buys a dozen pack. She throws it in the back, and then hops up again into the driver seat. Jinri is still occupied with the boys, and Krystal is staring out the window. She’s gotten weirdly pale, paler than before, and gained some weight. At first, Seulgi thought she was imagining it. But now, she sees it is very obvious. Krystal’s gotten rounder – but “rounder” meaning “not incredibly tiny” because   
Krystal, before, was naturally quite thin, with a distinct fairy-like figure, like a feather carried around by a breeze. Now, Seulgi thinks she and Krystal may be about the same size.

“When are you going to return to the boys’ car?” Seulgi asks bluntly. What she had meant to say was something along the lines of: Are you feeling better? But it doesn’t come out quite as nicely as when Jinri says it. Krystal literally flinches.

“I don’t know,” she says, voice hoarse like she’s just woken up from a coma and hasn’t used her voice in six months.

Seulgi opens her mouth to say something, and then realizes she doesn’t know what to say.

The thing was, Seulgi had learned to like Krystal. Or something akin to not-hatred. Contrary to what Seulgi had previously presumed, there wasn’t just empty air in Krystal’s head. She was smart, got good grades, had a dryer sense of humour than her bubbly giggles would suggest. She was also shy, and still kept safe distances away from Seulgi even when they all shared motel rooms.

Somewhere amidst all that, Seulgi found something of her old self inside of Krystal—someone wrung out of energy, jaded, scared.

“I’m pregnant,” Krystal whispers, barely words—barely audible, all breath. Seulgi feels a rush of cold air against her skin, but the windows are closed, and the leather seats under her legs are humid.

“I haven’t told Jinri. I don’t know—I can’t tell her,” says Krystal again, her chest heaving. “She’s going to be furious with me…”

Seulgi feels like she’s talking around a boulder in her throat. “Jongin?”

Krystal’s shoulders shake. She isn’t even crying, there are no tears—it’s just a violent shudder, like a shiver running up her spine, bending her over until she’s curled into a ball.

 

 

Sometime around ten pm, they find a motel and turn in for the night. Seulgi lies awake until one am, staring up at the ceiling—wondering, not for the first time since this insane trip started, how the hell she’d ended up in the middle of this warzone, pulled back into Jinri’s life, into Jinri’s friends, who were just as wild and confused as Jinri was, or maybe even more so.

The bed beside Seulgi shuffles, and Seulgi stiffens. She makes out Krystal’s weak figure standing up, throwing the covers off carefully, tiptoeing across the room, and then pulling open the door.

Seulgi shoots up in bed. “Krystal?”

Krystal freezes. She looks over her shoulder. “Go back to sleep, Seulgi.”

“Where are you going?”

Just then, Jongin appears at the door. He is in his pyjama sweat pants and Adidas slippers, with no socks on.

“Just go back to sleep,” Krystal whispers, and then closes the door behind her.

 

 

“How did you know?” Seulgi asks Sehun. They found a diner the following morning, and Sehun had stood up to pay at the counter for their breakfast. Seulgi followed him, sliding up to his side to find answers.

“What?” he says, fumbling for cash in his wallet because the waitress tells him they don’t take credit. The lady’s chewing some really strong mint-flavoured bubble gum that smacks against her teeth as she waits for Sehun’s money.

“Krystal told me,” Seulgi replies. “Just me. Not Jinri.”

Sehun takes out a ten-dollar bill. “I’m not surprised,” he says.

Seulgi cocks an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

He fishes out two more twenties and layers them over the ten. Then he slides over the cash and tells the waitress to keep the change. The waitress smiles, popping open the till, and Sehun turns to face Seulgi. “There’s something very trustworthy about you,” he says. “That’s what I mean.”

Seulgi scoffs. “What the fuck kinda shit are you saying now?”

“See, _that_ ,” Sehun replies, “That right there. You put up these walls – walls as strong as a fortress. Impenetrable.” He tilts his head, and Seulgi thinks she sees miles and miles of secrets in his own black-brown eyes too. Her jaw locks. His mouth seems to twist into something that could be a smile. “It feels like you can guard secrets very well behind walls like yours.”

The waitress slides him their receipt. Her gel nails are painted a hot pink, and she drums them once on the counter as she pulls her hand away. Seulgi glances at her, and the lady catches her gaze then pretends not to have noticed.

“Whatever,” Seulgi tells Sehun. She grabs the receipt before he can get to it, and crumples it in her palm. Sehun throws her a look, but doesn’t interrupt her. “Get back on track. You didn’t answer me. How did you _know_?”

Sehun sighs lightly, scratching awkwardly at his nose. In the morning light, Seulgi can see where his black roots are growing out. She thinks, briefly, that he’d look better with black hair than the dirty-blond he has right now. 

“Jongin came to me one night and asked me if I had condoms because he’d run out,” Sehun explains, in a single breath. “I told him I had none, and apparently he’d already checked Taemin’s wallet with no luck.”

“Fuck,” Seulgi shakes her head, biting her lip. “And he just, what? Went ahead with it anyways?”

Sehun shrugs. “He walked out, muttering ‘fuck’ and—and that was that, I guess.”

“You _guess_?” Seulgi exclaims. The old couple beside them jump in their seats. She exhales and tries to lower her voice. “What the hell, why didn’t you stop him?”

“Stop him?” Sehun counters. “I didn’t _know_ he was going to go do it anyways! Jongin’s not—“ He takes a shallow breath. “I mean, he’s not the reckless type, okay? Well actually, he is. But not like Taemin-reckless.”

Seulgi’s head spins. “This is so fucked. You realize how fucked this is, right?”

“Look, Jongin is a good guy!” Sehun insists. “He’s not the selfish asshole you might think he is.” He pauses then, and Seulgi almost knows he’s going to say it before he actually does. 

“He loves her, you know.”

Seulgi rolls her eyes. “I don’t really believe in that crap.”

“You don’t believe in love?” Sehun says incredulously. He looks mildly unimpressed for a second. “Oh, come on. Has anyone ever told you being cynical is overrated?”

“No, not that,” Seulgi replies. She throws the crumpled receipt at his chest and it falls onto the counter. “What I meant was I don’t believe in the idea that love is some excuse for mistakes.”  
Sehun just stares at her, blinking and quiet. The diner bustle hums around them in the silence. Seulgi holds his gaze for a moment, but looks away. Sehun clears his throat.

“Why not just throw it out if you’re just going to crumple it?” Sehun sighs, fiddling with the receipt as they walk back to their table.

“The waitress put her phone number on the back. Just in case you ever want to hit up some pretty 40-something,” replies Seulgi, hands tucked into her denim shorts. “You know, run away from this life for a bit.”

Sehun hums, stuffing the receipt into his back pocket. “Right. Tempting,” he murmurs, and Seulgi can’t even tell if he’s joking anymore.

They slide back into their booth. Seulgi stares at Jinri and Taemin as they use a potato wedge to try and re-enact the spaghetti scene in _Lady and the Tramp._

Here they were, six teenagers, in the middle of nowhere; going nowhere and being no one but reckless kids in their passing youth, eating at shoddy diners and staying at shoddier motels. And for what? thought Seulgi. They would hit a wall eventually. Didn’t they all know that? Why was everyone so insistent on pretending that their grimy road trip was going to be this eternal state of carefree bliss? Seulgi watches as Krystal laughs at one of Taemin’s obnoxious jokes, large grin brightening her face so prettily you wouldn’t even know she’d been throwing up her stomach not even ten minutes ago. 

What would it take to pop the goddamn bubble? For them to realize that all roads end somewhere?

It all ends somewhere. That was the surest truth Seulgi knew.

 

 

In the next town over, there’s a cinema. It only plays old black-and-white films but they buy tickets anyways because it’s super cheap and they’re all bored out of their minds in the motel.

Sehun tries to pay for Seulgi’s ticket, but Seulgi just elbows him and slides over a five-dollar bill to the clerk. Taemin whistles and mumbles something about Sehun “making moves”, which rouses a light laugh from the others, as Sehun and Seulgi both give him in the finger.

Inside the theatre, Seulgi takes the seat at the edge, with Krystal on her left. The movie starts playing without any trailers or commercials, and half of them promptly fall asleep. Sehun is awake, Seulgi notices, and so is Krystal but she’s not really watching the movie. Her eyes are cast down, and Seulgi realizes she’s staring at her belly. Her hands taps a light, rhythmic beat against her stomach, but her gaze is wide with something that looks like fear, awe, apprehension or some mix of all three. Seulgi can’t really tell in the darkness.

She catches Sehun’s eyes once in the hour and a half that the movie is playing, and he’s just staring at her. It unsettles something in Seulgi’s gut when he won’t look away, but suddenly, in the pale white lighting of the movie projector, Seulgi thinks it might not be her that he’s staring at. 

It’s Krystal. He’s looking at Krystal, entranced, watching as she stares down at her stomach.

The movie ends. They all walk back to the motel in lazy strides. Jongin and Taemin stop to buy some beer from a store. The rest of them turn in for the night.

Seulgi climbs into bed after a cold shower. The bedsheets are itchy and the room smells dank, like moss or wet asphalt, but other motels have been worse (or maybe she’s just used to it by now), so the faint sounds of the nighttime crickets, the television playing on low, the water from the shower, Krystal’s light sniffling – all the noises fade out from Seulgi’s consciousness and she tumbles headfirst into an instant, deep slumber.

 

 

A little past midnight, Seulgi wakes to use the bathroom. On her way back to bed, she catches sight of Sehun through the window. He’s sitting out in the parking lot, in the back of Seulgi’s truck, head bent upwards towards the sky.

Seulgi grabs a sweater and heads outside. She closes the door softly, crossing the lot in quick strides. Tonight is colder than most nights. The air is harsh on her bare legs. Sehun turns when he hears her sneakers scuffling towards him on the pavement. Without a word, he slides over to make room and Seulgi hoists herself up into the truck beside him.

“You should sleep, you know,” Seulgi says. She tucks her knees up to her chest and leans back against the truck’s rear window. “Next town over is a bit of a drive.”

Sehun shakes his head. “Can’t sleep.” There’s a beer can in his hand. He shakes it loosely. “Jongin and Taemin are snoring like bears and our room just smells—“

“Awful,” Seulgi finishes. She chuckles when he looks at her. “Yeah, I know. Ours isn’t much better.”

“It sucks,” Sehun answers, bringing his drink to his lips. He chews the metal for a second before tilting his head up once more to the sky. Seulgi follows his gaze. She can see why the view is addicting. They don’t see stars like this in the city. “I was thinking of pitching an idea to the group tomorrow morning.”

Seulgi lifts an eyebrow. “You want to go somewhere in particular?”

“Yeah,” says Sehun, his fingers fiddling with the cotton of his shirt. “Home.”

He puts down his beer. Somewhere in the distance, an owl starts hooting. Seulgi rolls her head to the side, staring intensely at his profile. His skin looks nice in the moonlight, she thinks. Really nice. It’s sad, she realizes, that he doesn’t seem to know this himself.

“Why home?” she asks him quietly.

“I think, maybe,” he stammers, lip caught between his teeth, “I think the road has to end somewhere. And I think it should end soon.”

Seulgi’s arms crawl with warmth. It was strange to hear those words spoken aloud, to hear them with as much conviction as she had said them herself in her mind. Sehun’s eyes flit towards her uncertainly. She smiles at him, small and careful, as if to tell him she gets it. His shoulders deflate, in relief or maybe surprise.

“You’re really going to tell them all you want to go home?” Seulgi says. She takes his beer can and sips it lightly. It’s gone slightly warm and tastes awful but it burns her throat the way she likes.

She’s staring at the thin, quiet line of Sehun’s mouth and almost before he says it, she already knows his answer.

“I don’t know,” he exhales, running a hand through his hair. “God, they won’t listen to me. They don’t take anything seriously.”

Seulgi hums. “I would listen to you,” she says.

“What?” he asks, as if he’s misheard.

Seulgi shrugs. “I said I would listen to you,” she repeats. “You know, if I was your friends.”

He chuckles, but it mostly sounds like another sigh. “Would you?”

“The thing is, Sehun,” Seulgi says, pushing the beer can into his chest after one last swig, “No one’s going to believe in you until you believe in yourself.” She inhales deeply. The cold night air filters into her lungs. “No one’ll notice you until you do something to be noticed.”

Sehun is tense beside her. He doesn’t say anything for a while. Then, “But _you_ noticed me.”

Seulgi almost chokes. “I’m sorry, what?”

Sehun laughs, and this time, it’s a real laugh. “I told you, didn’t I?” he smiles at her. “You got this fortress thing around your emotions but I know you see things behind your walls. You pretend you don’t, but you do.”

Seulgi scoffs, but the goosebumps on her arm aren’t from the wind. “Maybe so,” she murmurs, with a half-shrug. “Maybe I do notice.”

The breeze that comes along makes her clutch her sweater tighter. Sehun takes off his own sweater and throws it around her shoulders. She’s cold so she accepts it. Sehun’s gaze has gone back up to the stars.

“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

Seulgi doesn’t see him freeze but she senses it somehow, as if the small sliver of air between them has gone rigid, but his voice comes out steady. “I’m bad with ambiguity, just so you know,” he says, after a second.

Seulgi chuckles. “Fair enough,” she sighs. “I can see why you’d love her, though. Lots of people must fall in love with her. That was one of my first thoughts when I saw her. She’s something beyond pretty - and not just in the physical way.” Sehun looks almost stunned to hear her Seulgi say all of that. “You want to go home so she can start eating properly and see a doctor and stuff, right?”

“You shouldn’t go around assuming things.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Seulgi mutters, throwing her hair to one side because the wind blows it messily across her face. “But I’m just saying. It’s okay to _want_ things for yourself, Sehun. Or to want people. Even if they are your best friend’s girlfriend.”

“Jesus,” Sehun says. He throws his head back to empty his beer, then crushes the can in his hand. “It’s not like that. Not the way you think it is.” He licks his lips. “I mean, you’re not wrong. She’s one of those people that makes you fall into her orbit without trying. But she’s Jongin’s. And now I just want her to be okay. Happy. Whatever that means. And I’d want the same for Jinri. Or Jongin or Taemin.”

Seulgi watches him lick the beer off his lips, and concedes. “See, now I’m believing you,” she smiles, knocking his shoulder with her fist. “Because you believe it yourself.”

Sehun shakes his head with a dry laugh. Then he gives her a kind of look, soft but intense, straight into her eyes, that would make most people recoil or swoon. Seulgi just stares back blankly. “You know, you’re really hot in this reckless, short-tempered, enigmatic kind of way,” he tells her, and Seulgi is about to punch his shoulder again but stops herself. “And you clearly hate all of us.”

“Hate’s a strong word.”

“Should I use a different word?”

“No, go on.”

Sehun rolls his eyes. “You clearly hate all of us. So why are you here? On a road-trip with four strangers and a friend you haven’t spoken to since middle school? I know Jinri forced you to come but you could have said no.”

Seulgi throws her arms up, like it’s the most useless question she’s heard in ages. “Sometimes, you want to go on a vacation. Why else do people drive for hundreds of miles?”

“To run away,” Sehun says. “Being around toxic people distracts you from the toxic parts of yourself.”

Seulgi’s heart beats in her ears. She counts the seconds that pass and listens to the wind blowing louder than the pounding of her chest. She doesn’t know, really, what it’s like to be Sehun or any of them. She doesn’t know get how all of them could hold onto each other so tightly, holding on even though they know they’re all dominos stacked one behind the other – if one crashes, they’ll all crash.

“You would do everything for them, wouldn’t you?” Seulgi whispers, like it’s all coming into focus before her.

Sehun pauses for a single heartbeat. Seulgi counts. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess I would.”

“Why, though?”

Sehun turns his head to the side, meets Seulgi’s eyes, and leans his face in towards hers. She doesn’t flinch away. She just watches him, waits for him to do something. His pause is long enough for her to back out but she doesn’t, so he goes the rest of the way and presses their lips together, and Seulgi lets him, opens her mouth for him, pushes forward so their chests touch and he grabs the back of her head and she grabs the back of his, and when they pull away, Sehun’s hand is resting at her cheek and Seulgi, for the first time since she hopped into her truck weeks ago, thinks she wants more.

“We protect each other,” Sehun replies quietly. “That’s why I’d do anything for them. Because they’d do it for me.” He runs his finger along Seulgi’s lower lip. “Seven billion people in the world, but to us,” he whispers, “goodness means looking out for us. Our world is _us_. You see?”

And Seulgi, for once, does see how pretty it is to look at the world and all its meaning, and just shrink it down to five people. And when Sehun kisses her again, she thinks this is what it tastes like to depend on someone so completely, both blissful and frightening.

They watch the stars for another hour and they kiss some more and then they head back to their rooms. Seulgi’s skin is tingling with warmth. But beneath those fleeting sensations, her heart is heavy and her head is clouded.

And before she sleeps, she doesn’t let herself forget: all roads end.

 

// end


End file.
